Wildlife

Brazilian policymakers can take some of the credit for a dramatic slowdown in the deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon, say experts – but that’s not the whole story. In November Brazil announced 

The Center for Integrated Solutions to Climate Challenges is seeking applications for an Executive Director.  The Director will lead the Center for Integrated Solutions to Climate Challenges to be an internationally reputed climate adaptation center that is engaged in providing climate knowledge and service at all levels.

The Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council will be hosting an Alaskan Conservation Foundation Internship this year.  The successful candidate will be either currently enrolled in university or a recent graduate.    

Interested in becoming a more effective conservation leader? The Society for Conservation Biology will host a 2-day "Building Leadership Capacity in Conservation" workshop at the 2013 International Congress for Conservation Biology in Baltimore. This highly interactive workshop is for 25 conservation professionals from around the world, tailored to the unique needs of conservation scientists and practitioners at any stage in their career.

Kinship Conservation Fellows is a ground-breaking environmental leadership program that emphasizes market-based solutions to environmental problems.

Happy New Year! As 2013 gets underway we have one more retrospective on the year past. 2012 saw water issues crop up repeatedly. Droughts, flooding, and storms brought the extremes of water availability into focus, and the dependency of agriculture on the resource made it a key sector. Several case studies from landscapes worldwide highlighted these issues.

For the last fifteen years, I’ve worked as a volunteer – a citizen anthropologist – in the collaborative conservation movement sweeping across the American West.  I co-founded the Arizona Common Ground Roundtable in 1997.  For the next five years, we (the Roundtable) sponsored forums across the state to bring ranchers, environmentalists, and sportsmen together to talk about the future of Arizona’s wide-open spaces.

November 21^st is World Fisheries Day, an observance celebrated every year by fishing communities across the globe. CI’s Keith Lawrence recently met with residents of one Ecuadorian fishing community, where he saw firsthand the positive impact that broad conservation efforts are having on local livelihoods.  

The creation of a sustainable future will require the development of conservation practitioners with a strong foundation in science, leadership, and management. In addition, these practitioners will need to engage in cross-disciplinary problem solving, to understand cross-cultural and cross-boundary issues, and to be comfortable operating adaptively in an environment of increasing complexity and uncertainty.

 One summer afternoon I bobbed on the waters of a river with an Indian name, watching a kingfisher dive for fish. Osprey perched nearby, and a few feet from my kayak a salmon jumped with an impressive splash.